Martin Hamilton – MAH Digital Marketing

Email marketing is used by some of the largest businesses in the world today. You need to know professional email marketing isn’t just for big brands with huge marketing budgets. Truthfully, email marketing is one of the very best and most exciting marketing methods available for small and medium sized businesses. These businesses should have strict budget considerations and email marketing, if done properly, fits this parameter perfectly. Are you ready to make the most of your business marketing budget? Here are the top benefits of email marketing for any type and size business. Build strong relationships with your customers and potential customers Your customers like to know that you’re thinking about them and how you can add value to their happiness. That's the bottom line of what every human is seeking, right? Your subscribers want to be made aware of the latest examples and stories of how you can increase their objectives. Why wouldn’t you keep them up to date if that’s what they want? It’s nearly impossible to reach out to all of your customers by phone. Of course there is the automated phone messaging out there but most of that is a nuisance and much of it is being banned because of misuse. Who wants a robo call that's not relevant to what's going on inside your customers mind. Even worse, a phone call that's interrupting something important they are doing. Email isn't obtrusive and it's up to the recipient if they want email notifications turned on or off. Sending physical mail-outs (stamped letters) is costly, very time consuming yet has its place, yet email is far superior to all these methods in regards to tracking, cost, and overall effectiveness. Email is the best way to reach out with an update for your customers quickly also. The latest product launch, your next big event, and any news about your business and about the prospects industry are all great topics for regular newsletters. If a customer has opted in to receive emails from you, then you shouldn’t be shy about sending frequent—sometimes daily—emails and making contact with them. I know some very successful email marketers that always send one email per day and sometimes up to three in one day. These marketers develop strong relationships with ther email lists by providing what we've coined as the term infotainment. We compare it to a metaphor the famous actor of MASH, Alan Alda. He once said to keep an audience engaged with your content, "you provide content that's like a hot-dog yet nourishes them like broccoli." MAH Digital Marketing has courses that teach deeper into the information marketing world, and how to use information marketing programs and systems to grow your audience while converting your readers into happy paying customers. Still not convinced email marketing is one of the best ways to reach your customers? Consider that most people check their phone to see their email updates before they even get out of bed. Most everyone has an email account that's checked several times per day. What if your business could be one of the first things someone thinks about tomorrow morning just before they roll out of bed? Email marketing can deliver that kind of important content. Especially an email campaign that gets inside their sphere of thinking, interest, and intent. Develop your own unique brand Think about some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Some brand names have become so well known that they’re synonymous with the industry they operate in. Mention soft drinks and of course we think of Coca-Cola. Saran Wrap is another great example of this. What if your small business could have a clearly identifiable brand like that? Email marketing is a great way to develop your brand because it gives you a direct line to the email inboxes of your customers or potential customers. There are many ways to allow opt-ins throughout your content and on your website. Regular email updates give you a great opportunity to create a unique voice, style, and image for your subscribers. What do you want your brand to be? Create a brand guide and follow it with each and every email you send. Not only is every single email an opportunity to connect with your subscribers, but it’s also an chance to further bond your unique brand identity in their minds. Become an expert with expert and professionally written content As a small or medium sized business owner, you’re likely seen as a local or regional expert when it comes to your area of business. One way to further cement this identity in the minds of consumers is to continue positioning yourself as an expert through the use of that high quality and content that is relevant to their business and interest. We like to program our email opt-in forms to attach a custom fields to each and every subscriber. It's sort of like their DNA. It stays with them as long as they're on our email list. These custom fields explain the exact lead magnet piece or offer they opted in for and a second field tells us the exact post or page they opted in from. This way we can follow up with them by continuing that conversation they were already engaged in. Email marketing doesn’t have to just be about delivering coupons and sales information. In addition to emails designed to drive traffic to your business, you can use email marketing to deliver unique content that your subscribers will enjoy reading—or watching. Again it's infotainment. We even use what are called Soap Opera Sequences. These are interesting and sometimes shocking stories about people and events that have evolved around the products and services they're interested in. What's special about these types of emails is the fact that they emulate the way soap opera dramas uses to leave the viewer in an open loop or cliff hanger just before a commercial or just before the episode concluded for that day. They are super engaging and highly effective. Some subscribers wait for the next days email to find out what happened. Videos can be used in email marketing but not by sending the video itself. There are specific ways to promote videos in emails that don't get you into the spam folders or take up band width. You want your emails as lean as possible when it comes to pictures with lots of pixels and large file sizes of any kind that take up lots of bandwidth. When you use links to blog pages or videos in your emails as a part of your email campaign, you’re adding value to each and every email you send. Again, you've just got to be careful how you present them inside each email. By adding extra content inside your emails, other than just what you have to say that day, you are building your reputation as an expert. This also builds the reputation of your business communications. People will be excited to receive emails from you because they know you produce and deliver quality content on a regular basis. The type of content that is relevant to them. If you already offer expert content through a blog or YouTube channel, then you may want to consider offering exclusive content they can only get through your email subscriber lists. This email-only content type of offer compells people to subscribe to your email list. There are several types of content. There's how to solve a problem content, sales content or direct response content that has a call to action, and information only content, that builds the relationship and trust with your audience and potential customers. Your content is one of your most valuable marketing tools, and you can use it to build many other areas of your marketing strategy. If people love what you do and recognize it, then they’ll sign up to read, watch, and hear more great content. Best of all, that content gets delivered directly to them and it has an intent to move them along the ladder of nurturing while fulfilling their end need. Email marketing is efficient with time and budge you allocate for your business Within a small and medium sized business, there are strict time and budget constraints. While buying an advertisement during the Super Bowl would be amazing, it’s not an option for most small or medium sized business marketing budgets. Even targeted direct mail campaigns that deliver flyers to people's mailboxes can be costly. Between designing, printing, and mailing costs, you could spend several dollars per flyer to have them delivered. Sending flyers to a thousand people can suddenly get very expensive and with no promise of results. I market in the Real Estate industry for years and am well aware of postage mailers and letters to homeowners. The time involved with filming television commercials or recording radio ads can also eat into your bottom line. These are very expensive and the return isn't as good as what can be accomplished with a highly relevant and planned and automated email campaign. Every moment you’re not focusing on your business is lost revenue or even a lost opportunity to connect with people on a personal level. One of the biggest benefits of email marketing for small and medium sized businesses is efficient use of time and money. Professional copywriting of the content is one huge element while proper automation is the second. Putting both of these elements together in your email marketing campaigns bring huge returns. Designing a professional email marketing campaign can get very complicated and time-consuming. If you don't know the problems to be avoided there is a very high liklihood the email campaign will fail. It will prove to be wasted time and can even negatively impact your businesses reputation. Sending emails to a large number of subscribers is very cost-effective if done correctly. You get direct access to the email inboxes of potential customers without paying the expensive costs of direct mail. There is no doubt email marketing is still, and going to continue to be, one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing available to your business. Build your businesses credibility using professionally written and automated email campaigns One of the biggest hurdles a small business has to overcome is building credibility. Why should someone give their business to you when your name isn’t as recognizable as the big name business they see on tv or that comes up first on google when they search their needs? The reason people trust big name brands is because it largely comes down to marketing. They are familiar with these names, so they give these brands more trust. Even though you can serve their needs better than a big brand many times, they don't know this. You must work through this misconception. By using email marketing, you’re able to build credibility by staying in contact with your customers and keeping them up to date about your business. The more they learn about your business, and the more they hear about your business through stories, the more they’ll trust your business. Go above and beyond with a marketing strategy. Aside from small business email marketing, you have endless techniques and technology, if you know how to use them, at your fingertips in order to develop a robust and impacting strategy to convert prospects into loyal customers. Between buzzwords like account-based-marketing and artificial intelligence, where do you start? What’s going to help increase your bottom line without breaking the budget? Consider these questions before moving on to your strategy: Who’s your target audience? What are the marketing segments?What are your competitors doing?What does your lead pipeline look like?How does your product/service provide value?What are your KPI's and how do you use them?What is your marketing budget?Once you have those questions answered, you can move on to discovering the other small business marketing strategies that’ll drive the most results to match your determined goals. To explore ways you can explode your business with professionally written and set-and-forget automated email campaigns contact MAH Digital here. Here at MAHDM we have used many email services. If you want to use the very best we've found, and currently use, go here. It's the most inexpensive and robust email system and autoresponder on the market. Start learning it now or go to the contact link above and tell us about your business and how you think email marketing will help your business. It will, we know it.

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